S-PIN as theft prevention?

[M6TT F]

From what I’ve heard, any professional thief can disable s-pin, the same way the dealer can when it’s being serviced

[Carl_45]

Read my stolen CS45 thread…

Unfortunately, the car can be factory reset using a sequence of button presses and actions. I’ve not googled since, but when it was stolen I couldn’t find the code online. Something only crooks and VW know?

They also reset the car (I got an email saying primary user logged out) 20 minutes after our neighbours CCTV saw it drive off. And worse, VW Germany would not switch the tracking back on after admitting they could, but because of data protection 😡.

If you want security I’ve got a “lessons learnt” post from my naivety. We have a powered ring camera, ring alarm and I use a 5 digit code crook lock (Amazon about £100), keys can be found and even if you take it they’ll rummage through the house.  In my opinion, all you can do is try and make your car harder to steal than another one down the road, they’ll target someone else, harsh but true.

We have posts on our town FB page often about people looking around cars and some others about thefts, with a light up ring camera looking straight over the drive and the external light up ring box on the house, we’ve not had anyone go near my M2 even when we’ve been away in the family motor.

[davo245]

Read my stolen CS45 thread…

Unfortunately, the car can be factory reset using a sequence of button presses and actions. I’ve not googled since, but when it was stolen I couldn’t find the code online. Something only crooks and VW know?

They also reset the car (I got an email saying primary user logged out) 20 minutes after our neighbours CCTV saw it drive off. And worse, VW Germany would not switch the tracking back on after admitting they could, but because of data protection 😡.

If you want security I’ve got a “lessons learnt” post from my naivety. We have a powered ring camera, ring alarm and I use a 5 digit code crook lock (Amazon about £100), keys can be found and even if you take it they’ll rummage through the house.  In my opinion, all you can do is try and make your car harder to steal than another one down the road, they’ll target someone else, harsh but true.

We have posts on our town FB page often about people looking around cars and some others about thefts, with a light up ring camera looking straight over the drive and the external light up ring box on the house, we’ve not had anyone go near my M2 even when we’ve been away in the family motor.

What you really need to do is block the obd port access only steering lock any good is a dislock.
All other steering locks can be removed in minutes.

[Adam T7]

Apparently the only way a Disklock can be removed without the key is grinding it off.
They are heavy and cumbersome but I wouldn’t be without one.

[fredgroves]

I'd imagine going into the settings menu and doing a factory reset would wipe out all of the users and not require an S-PIN.

The S-PIN is only used for online services...

[Carlosfandango]

It could be that you’d be better off not using a PIN, and hope that any thief that took the car didn’t reset anything because they overlooked the need to without the prompt to enter the code, I don’t think the ‘tracking’ device is intended to be a security feature anyway, I’d think it’s purely a by product of having the ability to remotely access the car.